Path: utzoo!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!qualcom.qualcomm.com!maui.qualcomm.com!rdippold
From: rdippold@maui.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.misc
Subject: Re: Microsoft vs. the Feds
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.223049.3796@qualcomm.com>
Date: 12 Mar 91 22:30:49 GMT
References: <1991Mar12.185141.4559@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Sender: news@qualcomm.com
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Lines: 34

In article <1991Mar12.185141.4559@en.ecn.purdue.edu> stevew@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Steven L Wootton) writes:
>
>CNN is reporting that Microsoft is being investigated for anti-trust
>violations.  This has caused the value of their stock to fall 1/2 on NYSE
>today.  They aren't reporting anything else yet.
>
>Anyone know what this is about?

I would say that they've got a pretty good case vis a vis Microsoft using
their position as the operating system supplier to leverage their way in the
applications markets.  All from a "back seat lawyer" perspective here, of 
course.

Microsoft has long made use of features in their operating systems that they
have told noone else, but have then used the features to get an advantage in 
the applications market.  SideKick worked because Borland discovered one of
these undocumented features.  PC Magazine recently had a write-up on them,
and the list is amazingly large

In the dirty tricks department, Infoworld a week or two ago reported (in the
unofficial / rumors column) that Microsoft had been sending many programmers
down to Go Inc. to look at their new pen-based operating system and supposedly
enable them to begin writing applications for it, but in actuality they were
the people who were writing Microsoft's own competing version of a pen-based
system!

Last week, they reported what may have sparked the final push towards an 
investigation.  Some Microsoft people have been boasting that now that Windows
is fully accepted and has a large applications base, Microsoft intends to 
drive all the other major producers of major applications software (spread-
sheets, word processor, etc) out of the Windows market.

IBM has pretty much lost the FUD factor (Fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the
PC Market, but Microsoft seems to be carrying the torch.